I was thinking about episode Gotta Catch Ya Later, and its impact on me

I am going through a bit of a rough period in my life, and I found myself recently thinking about where my childhood went to, when I found myself thinking about this episode, the episode when the original trio parted ways, and how sad it made me feel.

Being a Pokémon fan since it came out, I had always assumed that I would always have the comfort of coming home from school, turning on the TV, watching Pokémon, and watching the continuing adventures of Ash, Misty, and Brock. However, I will always remember the Kid's WB! promo (wow, am I really that old now?!) where they promoted the hell out of this episode, making it all melancholy, with the narrator telling things like, "The moment you thought would never come, the friendship you thought would never end." and things like that. (I have tried finding this promo on Youtube again, but was never able to find it, if someone knows where I could find this promo, much appreciated.)

Before I get into personal thoughts on this, some background on me is required. I was born in 1991 to a firefighter/paramedic father and a US Army Washington State National Guard servicewoman mother. At the time of this particular episode's airing, I was eleven years old, just a month shy of turning twelve. (This episode had its first US airing in October 2003, and I was born in November 1991, so you do the math.) About six months prior to the airing of this episode, the US under the Bush administration invaded Iraq, and being the son of a National Guard service woman, I was ever fearful of my mother being called off to go there.

Watching this episode in its first airing, I was moved to tears. I had cried at one episode of Pokémon before, the Pikachu's Goodbye episode, but this one was even more touching. This was my first true experience with the notion that nothing lasts forever. Ash, Misty, and Brock had split up, and whilst Brock would be back a few episodes later, Misty left for good. Like most Pokémon anime fans at the time, I was a die-hard Pokeshipper as well. So, I had my heart torn out by this episode, since it aired during a hard time in my life.

First of all, I was in sixth grade, my final year of elementary school (my elementary school was K-6th), and I would be going to Middle School the following year. So, I was getting ready to transition to a new school, and having to say goodbye with one final year of things like three recesses from class, (since Middle School would get no recess) and the prospect of meeting new faces for the first time from other elementary schools in my district. I was also in the early stages of puberty, and starting to notice girls for the first time in my life.

That wasn't it, though. A couple weeks after this episode aired, my mother, who was part of the 81st Brigade of the Washington State Army National Guard, called me into the kitchen to tell me she was being ordered to go to Iraq for a year long deployment. My worst fear had come true, my mother was going to a warzone. The fact that Ash, Misty, and Brock were no longer going to be a traveling trio in one of my favorite shows, coupled with the fact my mother in real life was going to somewhere very dangerous, well, it didn't do very well for my psyche at the time.

Now, to my relief, my mother was destined to survive her one tour and only have one in her entire lifetime. (She's still in the Army, currently a Major), but my troubles didn't end there. During summer vacation of my sixth grade year, my father called me into the backyard, and he told me that he and my mother, who had been having marital problems, had contacted an attorney and filed for divorce.

I would start my seventh grade year that following September, and that's when I would experience the two-year long growing pains known as Middle School. It was also that year that I met the girl that would be the first girl I would ever fall in love with, and also the first girl to ever break my heart when she got a boyfriend three years later whom she is still with to this day. I would still watch Pokémon until it as announced that the WB and UPN would be merging to form the CW, and for some reason, that made it so that Kid's WB! would not renew their contract for the English dub of the show. (We couldn't afford the good cable with Cartoon Network at this moment in time)

I would then move to Virginia, suffer a year and a half of personal bullying and torment, before going back to Washington State, have my heart broken at my old high school, and then forced back to Virginia for an extra year of high school (I was supposed to graduate in 2010, but did so in 2011 instead) at a new school where I endured bullying and torment again.

It was this particular episode, and the other end of this particular bookend, which was when I saw Toy Story 3 in theaters and cried at the ending where Andy gave away his toys, that I realized, now, as a college graduate, going through his second feeling of falling in love (not going to go into details about this one) and trying to get his own place to chase his dream career as a Hollywood actor, that I realize that I can trace the inception of my feelings of, as Arthur C. Clarke would have put it, Childhood's End, to the original Saturday morning airing of this particular episode of Pokémon.

I don't know if I was actually going anywhere with this, but I just felt I needed to share this somewhere.

Fellow longtime Pokémon fans, did this episode impact you in a similar way? Why or why not? Discuss.

You musn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. (Tom Hardy as Eames, Inception)